Word: downplay
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Life offers such a grim plenitude of fatal accidents, of deaths visited on the undeserving without discernible pattern or purpose, that serious fiction, as opposed to mysteries and thrillers, tends to shun or downplay such events. Writers and readers alike expect stories to make sense, after all, and random tragedies simply don't. So author William Trevor takes something of a risk when he opens his latest novel, Death in Summer (Viking; 214 pages; $23.95), with a woman riding a bicycle along an English country lane being hit and killed...
Though the cash windfall was nice, both authors downplay the sudden change in their fortunes. Lamb and his wife, a high school teacher, are giving a lot of their newfound wealth away, while Mitchard was relieved merely to be able to pay some bills. Oprah has copies of their new books, but Lamb and Mitchard say they have no expectations that the star will pick them again. And it hardly matters. According to Pamela Dorman, Mitchard's editor, the author already has such an enthusiastic following that Viking has printed 400,000 copies of the new title. "Of course there...
Apart from certain omissions, there was nothing factually inaccurate in what Kolata wrote. Folkman, in his statements, went out of his way to downplay his findings. But his carefully cautionary tone was completely overshadowed by the quotes Kolata attributed to a host of other scientists and the adjectives they used to describe Folkman's work. His results were "remarkable," "exciting" and "wonderful." Dr. James Pluda of the National Cancer Institute said he and his colleagues were "electrified" and "almost overwhelmed" by the data...
...itself had not been so stylized, hyperbole itself so woven into the fabric of the event. The audience and even the sponsoring hosts came less to hear a reading than to canonize their hero, speaking and behaving in such a self-conscious series of superlatives that no account could downplay their ecstasy and still comprise a faithful report...
...Crimson to continue to focus obsessively on the blotter and downplay the substantive details of these crimes, is to do the HUPD--and students--a great disservice. ADAM R. KOVACEVICH '99 March...